Tamara Khanum

(stage name of Tamara Artemovna Petrosian). Born Mar. 16 (29), 1906, in Fergana. Soviet Uzbek dancer and singer. People’s Artist of the USSR (1956). Member of the CPSU since 1941. By nationality, Armenian.

Khanum began her stage career in 1919. She graduated from the Central Theatrical Technicum in Moscow in 1925. She danced in a musical ethnographic ensemble in Tashkent from 1926 to 1928 and helped organize musical drama theaters in Samarkand and Kokand between 1928 and 1934. In 1935 she performed at the first World Folk Dance Festival in London. She became a dancer of the Uzbek Philharmonic Society in 1936.

Tamara Khanum reformed the style of Uzbek women’s dancing and helped develop Uzbek ballet. She studied the folklore of the peoples of other republics and of foreign countries and introduced their songs and dances into her repertoire. The creator of the genre of the song and dance miniature, she choreographed most of the dances that she performed.

Tamara Khanum has been awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1941), the Order of Lenin, six other orders, and various medals.